THE FALL AND RISE OF SHOLAY
Anupama Chopra
Sholay was released on 15 August 1975 and seemed to falter at the start. The audience response was lukewarm; the film was roundly panned by the critics; even the ticket-blackers were unsure about the kind of business it might do. The release was staggering across the major territories; some distributors suggested reshooting the end, and letting Amitabh live. The makers of the film had just about reconciled themselves to the possibility that their ambitious film had flopped, when, in the second week, things turned around, and Sholay went on to become one of Bollywood’s biggest hits ever.
Sholay flopped. The critics were harsh, the performance at the box office was mixed and, the industry, waiting for the smallest hint to knock the mega project of the brash young director, was merciless. For the first time since Salim-Javed narrated the fourline idea two and a half years ago, Ramesh panicked.
The weeks leading up to the release had been a blur. Ramesh was bug-eyed from lack of sleep. The climax reshoot and remix had increased the birth pangs tenfold. Prints and negatives were flying between Mumbai and London. There was no time to savour the finished product. Meanwhile the hype had assumed a life of its own. The trade could talk of little else. Every day there was a new rumour: the film was being offered an ‘Adults only’ certificate; the censor board wanted further cuts; the 70mm prints were not ready, so the Sippys were postponing the release date … and on and on. A column in Trade Guide, the industry trade magazine, wrote: ‘Wherever we went, we heard nothing but Sholay … sometimes we also thought we would get allergic to it. Everyone wanted to see nothing but Sholay. Many people in the industry preferred to discuss Sholay to their own films.’
Minerva, on Mumbai’s Lamington Road, had been selected as Sholay’s main theatre. Minerva was known by its tag line: ‘The pride of Maharashtra’. It was the only theatre at the time with a screen big enough for 70mm and six-track sound and, with 1,500 seats it was also the largest cinema in the country. The theatre was dressed up like a bride for the release. Outside stood thirty-foot cut-outs of the star cast: Dharmendra, Amitabh, Sanjeev, Hema, Jaya and, of course, Amjad Khan. Inside were rows of photographs from the film, and garlands of flowers.
The premiere night was a glittering affair. On 14 August 1975, two premieres were held simultaneously, one at Minerva and one at Excelsior. For the cast and crew, it felt like life had come full circle. It was pouring outside, just as it had been on the first day of the shoot, and Jaya was glowing again—this time pregnant with Abhishek. The industry’s top names, all spiffed up and shiny, walked into Minerva to see what the fuss was all about. But there was a problem—the 70mm print hadn’t arrived yet. It was still stuck at customs.
The 70mm saga was a plot worthy of Salim-Javed. A senior bureaucrat in the finance ministry had declared war on the Sippys. Since a large part of the post-production work was done in London, several permissions were sought. The bureaucrat felt he hadn’t been given adequate importance and was still simmering. He decided to use every ploy to throw Sholay off track.
When the unit went to London, he wrote to the Indian High Commission there to keep close tabs on them. The Commission obliged. When the first 70mm print came out, Ramesh decided to have a screening for friends and family. It was fixed for ten one morning at the Odeon at Marble Arch. Ramesh also rang up the High Commissioner. ‘But how,’ said a senior secretary at the Commission, ‘can you have a screening? You don’t have permission for that. Your contract says materials must go straight from Technicolour to India.’ Then suddenly the secretary changed tack: ‘Okay, we’ll come.’ Ramesh had an intuition that all wasn’t well and at the last minute cancelled the screening. It was fortunate. Because at exactly 9:50, people from the High Commission turned up to seize the print.
Orders were sent out to stall the Sippys at every level. When Ramesh landed in Mumbai, he was strip-searched. When even that didn’t produce anything, the bureaucrat simply told the custom officials not to clear the print. On the morning of 14 August the prints were still lying in tins at the customs.
G.P. Sippy, never a man to take a beating lying down, went into action. He organized a high-level meeting. Attending on G.P.’s terrace were Rajni Patel, a noted lawyer and a close confidant of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and V.C. Shukla, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, who was also to be the chief guest at the premiere. Shukla simply called Delhi and blasted the bureaucrat: ‘What are you trying to do? Tell them to release the prints now.’ The bureaucrat, taken aback by the reach of the Sippys, mumbled a quick ‘Yes sir.’ But he managed to delay the prints by a few more hours. By the evening they still hadn’t reached the theatre, so Sholay’s premiere audience saw a 35mm print.
Through the screening, there was little reaction. The audience seemed unmoved. There was no laughter, no tears, no applause. Just silence. ‘It was scary,’ recalls Geeta. In the stalls sat Prakash Mehra, who had once been one of the contenders for the four-line story. ‘Maine yeh kahani kyun chhod di? (Why did I let this story go?)’ he asked himself aloud. After the film, as the audience streamed out of the hall, Pancham, who had been sitting next to Mehra, whispered to him: ‘Log toh gaaliyan de rahen hain. (But the people here seem to hate it.)’ ‘Don’t worry,’ Prakash replied, ‘this film is a hit. No one can stop it.’
The missing 70mm print arrived after the screening and the Sholay crew decided to see it. After all, this was what they had sweated for. Around one in the morning, when most of the invitees had left, the film was screened again. Through the screening the Sippy production staff plied the audience with drinks. By the time the film finished at 5 a.m., many were inebriated. Salim had been drinking and simmering for much of the evening. During the interval, he had gone up to Amjad to congratulate him but the actor, still smarting from the [controversy about his] voice, had turned away.
After the screening Amjad was sitting on the Minerva steps. As people exited, Salim walked up to him and loudly demanded to know what his problem was. The argument quickly grew loud and aggressive. Director Ramesh Behl, who was standing close by, tried to douse the fire. ‘This isn’t the time for fights,’ he said. A crowd gathered and separated the two warring parties. Amjad was clearly incensed but he did not continue the argument, he just walked away.
The following morning, the feedback ranged from ecstatic to abrasive. Dilip Kumar loved the film, though after the train sequence, he did worry a little: after all, if a film started on such a high note, where would it go from there? Raj Kapoor thought it was ‘nice’ but could have done with a little more romance. Rajendra Kumar was more sceptical. There was no mother figure; and what kind of friendship did the two men share? Jai betrays his friend when he talks to mausi about marrying Basanti to Veeru!
The rest of the film industry wasn’t as polite as Kumar. The morning-after-the-premiere grapevine dripped poison. The film was dubbed ‘Chholey’, and the main cast, ‘Teen maharathi aur ek chooha (Three warriors and a mouse)’. Everything was wrong with the film. Why would women and family audiences want to see so much gore? The friendship was in such bad taste. Amjad had no presence, and no voice … ‘Hindustaniyon ko aisi picturein nahin achhi lagti hain (Indians don’t like films like this),’ pronounced a prominent industry figure.
The critics agreed. Taking off on the title of the film, K.L. Amladi writing in India Today called it a ‘dead ember’. ‘Thematically, it’s a gravely flawed attempt,’ he wrote. Filmfare’s Bikram Singh wrote: ‘The major trouble with the film is the unsuccessful transplantation it attempts—grafting a western on the Indian milieu. The film remains imitation western—neither here nor there.’ The trade magazines weren’t gushing either. ‘The classes and families will find no reason for a repeat show,’ said Film Information. Trade Guide called it a milestone but qualified the praise with a negative comparison with Deewaar.
Now it was up to the audience. On 15 August 1975, Sholay was released in the Bombay territory with forty prints.
Despite the notorious Mumbai ki barish, which was coming down in torrents, the crowds turned up; in fact, many people had started queuing up outside the theatres the night before the advance booking opened. Amidst the eager first-day audience roamed the police, keeping order and a check on the black marketeers. At least in one theatre they found that the owner himself had held back over a thousand tickets. The demand for tickets was so high that in some theatres the managers just put the phone off the hook. Looking at the advance, trade pundits were predicting that the film would cross a business of eleven lakh rupees in its first week.
But the buoyancy was balanced by the legions of cynics. After the premiere, the critics and industrywalas had already given their verdict, and there had been more brickbats than bouquets. Even the black marketeers—those most knowledgeable of critics—were a little apprehensive about the film. Sure, it was the Midas-touch team of the Sippys and Salim-Javed, and yes, the film had an impressive star cast, but the story sounded strange: Sanjeev was playing a handicapped man and Jaya a silent widow, and there was some new villain who wasn’t in the mould of the suave smugglers of the day like Ajit and Pran. In fact, some blackies were dismissing Sholay as a second-rate take-off on Mera Gaon Mera Desh, which had made tonnes of money for them earlier.
The Sippys’ only hope was that the audience would prove them all wrong.
There was no reaction. On Friday, 15 August, the first day of Sholay’s release, Ramesh drove from one theatre to another to assess the reaction of the audience. As on the premiere night, there was only silence. Over the weekend, panic set in. The theatres were full but the reports were mixed. Pundits were now predicting disaster. No one told Ramesh that, but he could see it in the faces of all those he met. Every one wore that peculiar expression of pity and awkwardness. They met him like he was a man in mourning.
The Sippys moved into damage-control mode. On the weekend, a hurried meeting was convened at Amitabh’s house. G.P. Sippy, Ramesh and Amitabh put their heads together to try and come up with solutions. Since there was no fear of piracy at the time, the release of the film in the major territories was being staggered. They could make substantial alterations before Sholay hit the rest of the country. One suggestion was re-shooting the end yet again. Amitabh, post Zanjeer and Deewar, was too big a star to die. Jai was just a petty thief, he hadn’t done anything to deserve death. Perhaps an ending in which the two couples walk into the sunset would salvage the film.
Salim-Javed were vehement that the film shouldn’t be touched. Ramesh considered the suggestion for a new ending, but not for long. His head said he should do it but his heart wouldn’t allow it. He went with his heart. A happy end would compromise his film even further. It was important that the audience leave the theatre with a feeling that something had been left unfinished. That slight ache in the heart was part of the film’s appeal. Not a frame would be touched. He would swim or sink with the film.
As the week wore on the anxiety of the crew turned into depression. On Monday morning, when the second week advance booking opened, there were modest queues outside Minerva and Excelsior where the 70mm prints were showing. At the other theatres, hardly two or three people stood for tickets. In most of the suburban theatres, matinee shows had less than fifty per cent collections. For Ramesh, this was confirmation that all was lost. He was devastated. That evening he walked into Film Centre, where more prints were being made, and told Anwar, ‘Printing band kar do. Abhi kuchh samajh main nahin aa raha hai (Stop the printing. I don’t understand what’s going on.)’ At home, the unflappable demeanour cracked. It was the first time in his remarkable career that he was facing a flop. ‘I think I’ve failed,’ he told [his wife] Geeta.
At the Sippy house the tension was palpable. G.P. Sippy stood rock-steady and characteristically optimistic. He was sure that the film would turn around. But at the back of his mind sat unpleasant thoughts: The film had gone way over budget and creditors had to be paid back. They might never be able to make a film again. This was one gamble that could set them back by years. There were even rumours that the Sippys were packing up and leaving the country.
One week later, on 22 August 1975, Sholay was released in Bangalore in six theatres. Suresh Malhotra, the distributor, organized a grand premiere. The entire main cast and crew flew in for the night. Suresh loved Sholay. When interviewed by Film Information in July, he had predicted that the film would do a business of one crore. But it didn’t look like the business would bear his claim. Even before the first week was over, collections took a dip in Bangalore. In the second week, Ramesh called Suresh: ‘Look,’ he said, ‘other distributors are suggesting trimming the film. Do you want any cuts?’ ‘No,’ Suresh told him, ‘I won’t touch an inch.’
Amitabh was shooting in Kashmir for Yash Chopra’s Kabhi Kabhi. His co-star, Shashi Kapoor, had seen Sholay at Minerva with his children and was convinced that the film was a hit. All of them, including his driver, had enjoyed it. The audience seemed to be having a good time too. But a morose Amitabh insisted that the film had flopped. He literally cried on Shashi’s shoulder, ‘Nahin yaar, gayi, picture flop ho gayi. (No, yaar, it’s over, the film’s a flop.)’ Ramesh Sippy has ruined your life, Amitabh’s other producers told him. ‘After the fabulous shooting,’ Amitabh says, ‘that felt like a bucket of cold water.’ Back in Mumbai, Jaya was equally upset. Sholay wasn’t just another film that Amitabh and she had worked in together. They had been personally and emotionally involved with it.
But perhaps the worst affected was Amjad. As the negative feedback filtered in, Amjad became more and more silent. The normally effusive and volatile man retreated into a shell. His house was enveloped in gloom. An equally disheartened Asrani visited him in the first week. Asrani had been shooting at the nearby Mehboob Studio with Aruna Irani and she had suggested dropping in at Amjad’s. ‘Maine dam laga diya, ab nahi chali. Kya kar sakte hain (I gave it all I had, but it hasn’t worked. There’s nothing to be done now),’ Amjad told them mournfully. ‘Lekin aapki taareef to bahut ho rahi hai (But there are great things being said about your performance),’ Asrani countered. Praise was little consolation. ‘What’s the use, yaar?’ Amjad replied, fighting back tears. ‘SalimJaved have told Ramesh that my voice ruined the picture. Sorry folks, I’ve missed the bus.’
The trade papers added salt to the smarting wounds. The 23 August Trade Guide carried a front-page article titled ‘Valuation: Sholay’. The article calculated the total cost per major circuit to be Rs 32,70,000 and concluded, ‘Sholay will be a sad experience for distributors … Particularly the death of Amitabh and the short role of Jaya Bhaduri (also of Hema) have not been appreciated … the industry in general and the production sector in particular have to take a bitter lesson from this issue.’ Other articles in the magazine reported that the film ‘could have been made with less funds and with better results by a more competent director’. ‘One will never know why so much time, effort and valuable foreign exchange was wasted on 70mm,’ one article said. ‘Sholay will teach the producer and other moviemakers what to do and what not to do when making exceptionally ambitious films.’
In all the sound and fury, Salim-Javed stood firm. ‘Nothing doing,’ they said to re-shooting proposals. ‘This film will run.’ It was the cockiness of youth and the confidence of a job well done. The following week, the two put an advertisement in the trade papers. The ad said that Salim-Javed predict that Sholay will ‘be a grosser of rupees one crore in each major territory of India.’ The trade sniggered. Going by the response, the Sippys would be lucky if Sholay managed forty lakh per territory.
Salim-Javed were wrong. As it turned out, one crore was a conservative estimate. Mid-week, a curious thing happened: there was little advance booking, but the theatres were full. The proprietor at Geeta cinema in Worli told Ramesh, ‘Don’t worry, your film is a hit.’ It was the first time Ramesh had heard the word used in connection with his film. ‘How can you say that?’ he asked. ‘Because the sales of my soft drinks and ice creams are going down,’ the man replied. ‘By the interval the audience are so stunned that they are not coming out of the theatre.’ Finally Ramesh understood why there was no reaction. People were overawed by what they were seeing. They needed time. Now, clearly, Sholay had found its audience.
Word of mouth spread like a juicy rumour. The visuals were epic and the sound was a miracle; when Veeru threw the coin in the climax, people in the 70mm theatres dove under the seats to see where it had fallen. By the third week, the audience was repeating dialogues. It meant that at least some were coming in to see the film for the second time. Polydor noticed this and was quick to act. Record sales weren’t good and the music company was in a panic. Sholay was its biggest deal ever and only forty per cent of the investment had been recovered so far. Even though people came out of the theatres with smiles on their faces, they didn’t buy the music. Polydor even set up special stalls at the theatres, offering discounts, but the audience didn’t seem to notice.
The music men were bewildered. What was the problem here? Some key managers were dispatched to the theatres to see the film with the audience. They realized that the reaction to the dialogue was extraordinary. Obviously Sholay’s visuals and dialogue were so overpowering that the music barely registered. If Polydor wanted to sell more records, it would have to give the audience what they remembered when they left the theatre: the dialogue. About a month after Sholay hit the screens, Polydor released a fifty-eight-minute record of selected dialogue. Gabbar Singh featured prominently. The marketing men felt that he made the biggest impact.
The strategy succeeded. Polydor couldn’t keep up with the demand as records flew off the shelves. One batch wasn’t up to mark technically, so Polydor held it back, but dealers demanded that the records be released, and even these faulty records got absorbed.
The tide had turned. Sholay was beginning to prove all the doomsayers wrong. The trade pundits tried to shift ground without looking stupid. The 6 September 1975 Trade Guide issue declared sagely that ‘Sholay is a safe proposition.’ But, it asked, ‘is this enough?’ The editorial titled ‘Valuation: Sholay III’ read: ‘Sholay ought to have been another Bobby or Roti Kapada aur Makaan or Deewar. But, unfortunately, it is not.’
As the film caught on, tickets became priceless. The lines at Minerva stretched for a few kilometres, from the theatre to the nearby Tardeo bridge. The bus stop outside was renamed ‘Sholay stop’. The Minerva manager, Sushil Mehra, could barely keep up with the demand. He stayed at the booking window from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and finally just moved his family into a two-room apartment at the theatre; going home seemed pointless.
In Bangalore, a special bus plied from Ramnagaram to the theatre that was showing Sholay. Every villager, down to the last child, wanted to see the film. It was, in a way, their film as well. An enterprising bus operator started offering a combination—a bus ticket and a Sholay ticket for a special price. That way people wouldn’t make the long journey only to find that the theatre was housefull. The scheme was a sell-out.
Meanwhile, the black marketeers were raking in the moolah. The fifteen-rupee balcony ticket was selling for Rs 200. It was the first time in movie history that tickets had sold for more than Rs 100. Even the incessant rain couldn’t keep the audience away. One week Minerva was waterlogged, there was four feet of water in the lobby, and still the audience thronged the theatre. Everyone just took off their shoes, rolled up their trousers, waded through the water and got into the theatre. The board outside declared: Housefull. By now, watching Sholay in the theatre had become a little like a Karaoke experience. The entire audience would be mouthing the dialogue with the characters. Some had even memorized the sound effects, down to the last flipped-coin sound.
Macmohan hadn’t gone to the premiere. He was so upset with his edited blink-and-you-miss-him appearance that he had decided not to see the film. But he couldn’t escape Sholay. As the weeks passed, he noticed that people on the road were calling him Sambha and asking for autographs. He wondered how this could be? Had Ramesh added a few more lines? He decided to see the film. It was end-September when he walked into Minerva with his family for the evening six o’clock show. It was housefull. In the interval, Mac got mobbed in the balcony. And the audience in the front stalls were shouting for him. When the commotion became too loud, the manager asked Macmohan to show his face. Macmohan obliged.
But it didn’t end there. When the audience for the next show found out that Macmohan was in the theatre, they gathered in the lobby, shouting ‘Sambha, Sambha.’ The police had to be summoned. Finally, the manager had no option: he drove Mac’s car to the back entrance and asked him to leave. ‘I was totally shocked,’ remembers Macmohan. ‘Kabhi soch hi nahin sakte the. (I could never have imagined it.)’
The Sippys stopped listening to the trade. As the collections mounted, it became obvious that they were looking at something big. In September, Ramesh left for London to take his muchdeserved holiday. But every week the collections were given to him over the phone. Ten weeks after its release the film was declared a super hit, and on 11 October 1975 Sholay, already a blockbuster, was released in the territories of Delhi–UP, Bengal, the Central Provinces and Hyderabad to a record-breaking box office.
Two versions of Sholay ran in the country. The Rajshris were nervous about the length of the film—it ran for three hours twenty minutes and re-configured show timings. The final show ran till well past 12 a.m., but theatres had to shut down at midnight because of the Emergency. So the Rajshris asked Ramesh to clip the film for their territories—essentially Delhi–UP, Punjab, Rajasthan and the Central Provinces. Initially Ramesh was adamant that his vision remain whole, but after some arm-twisting he agreed to excise the jailer and Soorma Bhopali comedy tracks. They were the only two portions which were unrelated to the rest of the film. So while audiences in the Bombay territory, Bengal and the South saw the whole film, the rest saw a truncated version. But only for eight weeks.
As the queues got longer, it became obvious that show timings weren’t going to stop anyone from coming to see the film. So all the scenes were restored and the audience now returned to see the new characters. There were people who had seen the film ten or twelve times already. To the crew’s surprise, Gabbar Singh became a phenomenon. The Thakur, Veeru, Jai, Basanti—they were all memorable. But Gabbar loomed larger. The audience had a lovehate relationship with him. Gabbar was genuinely frightening but also widely popular. By now, Polydor had released fifteen dialogue EPs—Veeru ki Sagai, Hame Jail Jana Hai, Soorma Bhopali, Radha ki Kahani and, of course, Gabbar Singh. Gabbar was the biggest. His lines played in homes across the country and little children imitated his lilting sing-song voice. Soon, Gabbar Singh was selling biscuits.
Sunil Alagh, then group product manager of Britannia, was spending a quiet evening with his wife, Maya, when she suggested that Gabbar would make an excellent advertising icon. At the time, Parle-G was the king of the glucose biscuit market, with a ninety per cent market share. Glucose-D was a minnow with a negligible presence. Sunil jumped at the idea. The connection between Gabbar and Glucose was obvious and path-breaking: children loved Gabbar, they would love the biscuits he endorsed. He would have the kids literally eating out of the palm of his hand.
Not everyone at Britannia was sold on the concept. Companies used film stars, not film characters to plug products. And certainly not a nasty villain for children’s biscuits. J.B. Singh, the marketing director of Britannia, was one of the sceptics. But Britannia research showed that there were no negatives associated with Gabbar, and Alagh finally converted Singh by taking him to a nearby theatre. Gabbar’s allure was too powerful to resist.
Javed Akhtar suggested using Gabbar’s introduction scene for the advertisement. The script was done by a team from Lintas advertising agency, and the commercial was shot by ad director Kailash Surendrenath. Amjad, Macmohan and Viju Khote were assembled at a quarry on the road to the Mumbai airport, and the Sippys loaned out the costumes and guns. Kailash knocked off the commercial in two hours.
The commercial, which parodies Gabbar’s ‘Kitne aadmi the?’ introduction scene, was a sensation. Instead of running out for refreshments, people actually walked into theatres to see it. Even the usher at Minerva stopped his work to see the commercial each time it was screened. The biscuits were advertised as ‘Gabbar ki asli pasand’. Kids couldn’t get enough of Gabbar or Glucose. Sales doubled. And the pundits and critics were proved wrong again, as they usually are. The chooha was outshining all the maharathis. What many had dismissed as the film’s weakest spot had become its hottest selling property. Amjad was overwhelmed by the response. This was beyond anything he had imagined. With every passing day his stardom grew.
The newly crowned number one villain bumped into Danny Denzongpa at a busy intersection in Juhu. Danny was going in the opposite direction when he saw Amjad drive by in his Ambassador. Danny waved him down. Danny had never met him before but he hopped into Amjad’s car and congratulated him on a job well done. A crowd quickly gathered. Before driving off, Amjad thanked Danny for giving up Sholay. ‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘I would have remained an assistant.’ And Danny in turn thanked Amjad. Post Sholay, Amjad was quoting the unheard of price of eleven lakh rupees. Taking a cue, Danny, who till now was getting approximately six lakh rupees, hiked his price to ten lakhs. Even though he hadn’t worked in it, Sholay had benefited Danny too!
Several months later, Asrani ran into Amjad. Both had been invited to inaugurate a studio in Gujarat. On the flight, Asrani laughed: ‘Haan ji, did you miss the bus?’ Amjad broke into a broad grin. The studio was about forty kilometres away from the airport. While driving there, Amjad’s son felt thirsty, and they stopped at a small roadside stall. It was a ramshackle place selling cold drinks, biscuits and cigarettes. There was no other building or even a hut to be seen for miles. As they entered the shop, a voice crackled on a rickety gramophone: ‘Kitne aadmi the?’ Gabbar Singh’s dialogue boomed through the shop. The stall owner served the group their drinks but did not recognize the star. For a minute, Amjad stood absolutely still. His eyes squinted in recognition of his own voice. Then, listening to his voice playing in a shanty on a dusty, deserted road in the middle of nowhere, Amjad Khan sat down and cried.
Extracted from Sholay: The Making of a Classic.